Why My Best Time Is Now

The one where I hit 53 (almost as old as The Golden Girls), bench pressing, parental endurance, fillers and tolerance levels (lack of).

Mar 02, 2024

Today, lovely readers, is my birthday. Today, I am 53 which, I admit, gives me a bit of a shock when I say it out loud. I am not only well into the 45-55 age tick category now, but I am terrifyingly almost out of it. I have absolutely no complaints about being in my fifties. Firstly, because I am glad to be here and alive but also because being older no longer holds the stigma of full on transformation into grannyhood. When I look back on my parents wedding photos, my grandparents were the same age, if not younger, than I am now and although they look excellent, they are most definitely channelling the Golden Girls rather than Susan Sarandon (someone told me recently that Dorothy and Rose were only 55 when the series was filmed. WTF).

Peoples age now fascinates me. I cannot watch ANY film or show now without picking up my phone and googling how old the actors are (praise be for 58 year old Sarah Jessica Parker, not to mention 60 year old Brad Pitt), scrolling straight to the Personal Life section to see who they’ve been married to. Will they be older than me? Younger than me? Oh, the anticipation. On the flip side, watching Normal People had me covering my eyes; Paul Mescal may be meltingly hot but he’s also very close to the age of my kids which makes it almost like watching my own children having it off. Argh.

SJP. Flying the flag goals for women in their 50’s everywhere.

How my demographic managed to survive the teenage years would be a huge shock to my children now. A Day In The Life of 1980’s Lisa would have them recoiling in horror, mostly because of the dearth of social technology. No phones, no communication - at 14, I would leave the house on a Saturday morning and head into London on the tube to Carnaby Street to peruse Athena posters. My parents had NFI where I was; I could have been kidnapped, held hostage and if they weren’t in earshot of the home phone, they wouldn’t even have been able to ask for a ransom.

We might not have had phones, but we had better. We had pub and nightclub bouncers who didn’t care how old we were. Okay, okay, this sounds slightly irresponsible now but it did make for an excellent social life. I remember my (long suffering) Dad coming to collect me from Bogarts in South Harrow on a school night at 2am; we’d do Camden Palace on a Wednesday and Paradise Lost in Watford on a Friday, old school nightclubs with flashing entrance steps, velvet booths studded with cigarette burns, disco balls and Malibu theme nights where you’d return home smelling like a coconut.

Reminiscing aside, there are endless positives to reaching (and exceeding) half a century and many of these revolve around being able to make my own decisions without doubting myself. I have been there, got the t shirt, worn it and sold it on Vinted - like all of us, I have made mistakes and encountered hills (mountains, sometimes) in my life climb but I’m still here. And - along with the fact that I should only drink wine at weekends as it ruins my sleep pattern - they have shown me that there isn’t much that can’t be conquered. Here are a few key things that getting almost as old as the Golden Girls has taught me.

Exercise Called; I Answered. Begrudgingly.

I have spent my entire life avoiding exercise. Mostly because ever since school age, I have had a total lack of stamina - running is a prime example. I can remember being inexplicably chosen for the school Cross Country team when I was 14 (the only possible explanation is that they were either low on numbers or had me confused with someone else). I crawled in 61st out of 62 entries; the only reason that I wasn’t last is because I had struggled round The Peak with my friend Ailsa who was one step behind me as she’d stopped for a cigarette. As I got older and met Joe who is a gym addict (not by choice, more by necessity so he can scoff what he wants), I attempted a few times to join exercise classes, never lasting more than two weeks although it would take me at least six months to get around to cancelling the membership direct debit. Years passed and my only connection to fitness was from a spectator perspective. It seemed impossible to me that people enjoyed going to the gym, could look forward to it, in fact. My own children loved it despite their sloth like heritage; my eldest two ran half marathons and willingly left the house to exercise, ffs. It was beyond my comprehension that exercise was for fun. I’ll just eat less, was my mantra.

At this point, let me just confirm that my opinion has not changed. My dislike of self inflicted activity remains; I am not about to tell you that I had a Joe Wicksesque epiphany, social videoed myself doing pilates or starting listening to PMA podcasts on the treadmill daily. But at the end of 2022, I started to feel what I can only describe as ‘doughy’. It wasn’t that I felt that I weighed too much or that my clothes didn’t fit me. I was generally happy with all that (although it is FACT that weight moves far more slowly once you hit the glory of menopause). It was more that there was no toning to my muscles (AKA there WERE no muscles), my arms and legs felt flabby and my skin (thanks to the glory of the aging process) had lost any tautness it had had in my 30’s. To summarise, I wasn’t feeling happy with myself and if there is any time in your life that you can decide this, it’s when you’re 51 and you literally don’t give a f**k about anyone else’s opinions. Fact.

The time that they gave me Client Of The Week (I am sure there was an element of sympathy in this award).

So, spurred on by my friend Kate who had been singing the praises of peri menopausal weight lifting for a while, I popped my PT cherry and signed up with Ryan at TS Personal Training; one hour of strength training, three times a week on a six month renewal basis for, I admit, a not very little amount. Joe, at this point, had apoplexy. In fairness, it is no surprise that my historical fitness history would ring financial warning bells, but I am pleased to say (with a hefty dose of shocked disbelief) that 14 months later, I am still going. Okay, I never, ever look forward to it. I would be lying through my teeth if I said I enjoyed it. And if Ryan wasn’t standing next to me watching every move and counting me down, I would simply drop the weights and leave via Starbucks with a caramel frappucino and a cinnamon danish. But it’s made the biggest difference to my body - I’m significantly stronger, more defined, more toned and although the overall feeling is of massive relief when that clock watched hour finishes, I’m not giving it up any time soon. A begrudged, but strength boosting addition to my 50’s, for sure.

Never Complain, Never Explain.

Much of the way that I have approached life over the last decade has been influenced by being diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 41. My three children were small; the youngest, Leo, was only two - this event was compounded by the fact that my Dad had died, very quickly, at 61 from cancer three years previous. I had ALL the treatment, plus a mastectomy and reconstruction and (thanks to some lovely infection action) around eight GA operations, all of which instilled in me a love of hospitals and the work that goes on there by people who are completely dedicated to their jobs in often very difficult circumstances. These rank as the least fun few years of my life, but also as completely life changing ones that have imbued in me a total and utter gratitude for life.

Unfortunately, this gratitude has had a knock on effect on other people in that I literally cannot bear moaning about the small stuff. I don’t do complaining. I have become SHOCKINGLY intolerant and sometimes quite vocal which is exactly the opposite to how I was in my younger years. My daughter Ella recounted a work story to me this week where she solidly stood her ground under pressure - when I was her age, I would have dissolved into immediate tears at the very prospect of confrontation but, due to my excellent post cancer life training (ha), it transpires that she is a woman not for turning. She’s also en route for a career in medicine - good things can come out of the worst of experiences.

Good times came out of bad. This was a £40 Amazon wig.

I work on a social platform where I am boosted by an audience; if I didn’t have Instagram followers, I wouldn’t have a job. And although I know my follower demographic and have the joy of chatting daily to hundreds of them across the board, I am conscious of the fact that I have no idea of the personal circumstances of the people who are listening to me. I don’t know their life issues, their backgrounds, their financial situations, their home lives or anything at all, really. So I never complain, never moan because there will always, ALWAYS be people whose problems far exceed any that I have of my own. To quote rapper Lecrae, ‘before you complain today, be grateful you have breath to complain with’.

I Am Not Averse To Improvement.

The subject of how to deal with aging skin is a divisive one. As someone who was taught by my Mum to slap on Oil Of Ulay (that’ll be Olay to anyone past the Millennial) from the age of 11, I could have invested in a small Greek island with the amount of cash I’ve thrown into product over the last 40 years. Hyaluronic acid, retinol, peptides, ceramides, Vitamin C, Vitamin E - give me THE LOT and anything else that you can spot that promises eternal youth (preferably on on 2 for 1 at Boots). I’m here for it.

There is no doubt that as you get older, your skin starts to sag. After much investigation and, indeed, discussion with professionals about this horrifically depressing subject, I’ve discovered that the reason that this happens is because the older your skin gets, the more the elastin deteriorates (mostly due to exposure to sunlight) and therefore loses the ability to snap back, giving the impression of hanging off your facial bones. Jesus. My own personal aging skin drama was not assisted by having chemotherapy treatment which exacerbated the process. Fun fact: chemo removes ALL the hair from your body, including your face where, quite frankly, you don’t even realise you have it until it’s gone and you’re bloody freezing all the time. Basically, the epidermis loses the ability to hold on to moisture leading to extra dry skin. Super duper.

If it makes me feel good, then it works for me. Job done.

So when I hit 50, I threw caution to the wind and booked in for dermal fillers, bypassing Botox and going straight for the longer term option. And I LOVE it. They’re made of hyaluronic acid (which is in almost all the serums I plaster on to my face) which replaces lost skin volume. Why do I have fillers instead of Botox? This is entirely personal, of course, but I like the fact that dermal fillers last longer. Yes, they’re more expensive, but you only need to take the pain (from both perspectives, ha) once rather than three times a year. Combined with my normal skincare routine, it works. It’s made the biggest difference to the way that I feel about my skin and the way that I feel about myself. It’s not for everyone, but it makes me feel good and therefore, I can make the decision that I’m here for it.

The Kids Are Alright

Having small children is like undertaking a never ending endurance test. I had three under seven and for many years, our mornings started at 5am with The Tweenies and microwaved bottles of Aptimal, progressed through the day with an arsenal of baby wipes, iPads, nappies, Calpol, plastic animals and packets of Quavers, finishing at 7pm with me sitting on the stair outside the bedroom with a child shouting ‘ARE YOU STILL THERE, MUMMY?’ until they fell asleep. The joy when they were finally silent and I could skip down the stairs to a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, a quick Silk Cut and Holby City was extreme. I am always eternally grateful for my children but godammit, those days were hardcore.

When Leo, our youngest, was one year old, we went to Crete, to a tiny Hotel called Little Inn on the less frequented north side of the island. It was a holiday that was fraught with danger; there was no cot in our room, so we created a barricaded sofa space with cushions that Leo looked scornfully at (it took only one day for him to escape during his weekly nap and appear by the pool in his Pampers, only to be saved from the prospect of certain drowning by adjacent sunbathers). Anyway, I can clearly remember sitting down for dinner in the Hotel restaurant with the children, next to a German family with three polite teenagers. There we sat, one overheated child in a highchair yelling, two children arguing over the iPad, all of them asking repeatedly when we could go home, whilst our neighbours and their offspring discussed current affairs and politics (they were speaking German so I actually had no idea, but this is what I imagined they were doing). I looked at Joe - one day, this will be us, I said.

In the Little Inn pool. Good times but HARD WORK.

13 years on with Judith, my brilliant mother in law.

And now, it is. THIS IS US. I actually cannot believe that my children no longer steal my phone and cram it with games apps, that we don’t have to ask for the children’s menu, that I don’t add Fruit Shoots to my shopping order, that I don’t need a handbag big enough for the iPad, that I don’t need to tell them what to wear or what to eat, that I get up BEFORE THEM. I don’t even need to tell them to brush their teeth. Tonight we are all going out to dinner to my favourite restaurant and I KNOW that no one will have a tantrum. We might even talk about current affairs and politics. As I hit the heady heights of 53, it’s a whole new world. I wouldn’t give up those childhood years for anything, but damn, life has got easier.

I was watching Queer Eye this week and as the team transformed Tim, a hairy Kiss fan carer, the glorious JVN shouted ‘WHEN IS YOUR BEST TIME?’. And Tim said, ‘NOW’. This is truth. I’ve crammed a fair amount so far into my 53 years - some good, some bad and much of it ugly - but every experience has made me the person that I am today. With age has come confidence in myself and my abilities, albeit skills that I didn’t even know that I possessed when I was a 17 year old (illegally) knocking back Malibu and lemonade on a Watford dance floor to Rick Astley (the first time around, obvs). Happy birthday to me and bring on the next. Maybe not too quickly, ha.